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Sunday, 19 June 2016

Stories we should be thinking about

Ahead of the new working week here are a few finance and related stories to be thinking about.Macro matters:
A volatile last week...

...and here we are less than a week to go to the UK's EU referendum and the polling remains very tight...

(h/t @MSmithsonPB)

...even if the views of economists are pretty uniform: a Brexit would not be economically good news:

And what may happen in the event of a Brexit is potentially complex to say the least:

And there is a wide range of events that could happen:

All in all no surprise that there has been a large outflow in UK equity funds:

And as the Financial Times notes the amount of M&A deals have fallen off...

Britain’s share of global merger and acquisition activity
has tumbled to a record low, as dealmaking freezes amid the uncertainty over
the UK’s membership of the EU.

The volume of deals involving UK targets is down almost 70
per cent this year compared with the same period in 2015, with the $57.6bn
spent on transactions accounting for only 4 per cent of worldwide M&A.

Elsewhere I wonder what Janet Yellen will say on Tuesday in her semi-annual testimony before the Senate Banking Committee? Explaining the dot plot no doubt...

Let's see what Janet Yellen says about prices and interest rates going forward...however I liked this in terms of trying to identify potential opportunities in inflation friendly assets. Certainly that is where value investors should be looking...

(h/t @TihoBrkan)

This made me smile about energy policy...

(h/t @PatriciaLilyS)

...and potentially the future more commercial orientation of Greece:

Of course we know that the ECB is keeping its balance sheet loose:

A rationale for the Japanese to have safes as provided by the Financial Times:

I see the well-respected Indian Central Bank governor is to resign later this year (link here). It will be insightful to see how the local stock market responds to this news on Monday...

Sector and companies:

Via Seeking Alpha...'The weekend box office tally for Disney's Finding
Dory set a record for an animated movie as the film dominated the three-day
period (3X second place Central Intelligence)'. I still like Disney stock sub US$100/share.

'Volkswagen will submit its $10B plan this
month to fix a half-million emissions-cheating cars or get them off U.S. roads
even though it's awaiting regulators' sign-off on how to retrofit the vehicles.

According to Bloomberg, about $6.5B will go to car owners
and $3.5B to the U.S. government and California regulators'. I wasn't impressed by last week's 2025 update and in the European auto space at prevailing much prefer BMW...

Meanwhile did you see this in the Middle East? 'The ADX General Index advanced 4.7 percent to close at
4,524.41, the strongest level in almost two months. National Bank of Abu Dhabi
PJSC jumped 15 percent, the maximum allowed in a day, and First Gulf Bank PJSC
rose 11 percent after the lenders said in a joint statement they’ve formed
working groups to explore a potential combination'.